Cyber-Claus by William Gibson (The Washington Post Book World, 1991) is set in the near future and begins with a house AI detecting activity on the roof on Xmas Eve. The defences are activated and the owner prepares to confront the intruders.
This very brief piece ends (spoiler) with house AI identifying eight quadrupeds and one biped on the roof—and then the latter starts to come down the chimney . . . .
A lightweight squib.
* (Mediocre). 550 words.
Nicholas Was . . . by Neil Gaiman (Drabble II—Double Century, 1989) is a Drabble (a hundred word long short story) that suggests Santa is a person who is, like Promethus, etc., undergoing a punishment. This is about as forgettable as you’d expect.
– (Poor). 100 words.
The Thirteenth Trunk by Vida Jameson (Saturday Evening Post, 8th February 1947)1 starts with Lynn, who is working as a switchboard operator for a New York company called Courlandt Coal on a busy winter’s day. During the rush she gets a call on a disconnected line—but nonetheless hears a strangely accented caller called Van Kieft saying that he wants coal from Riven Hill. She quickly passes him on to a salesman called Jack Blake (who she has a crush on).
Later, Blake arrives at the order room with a coffee for Lynn, and he tells her about the conversation with the “screwball” that she put through to him. Apparently Van Kieft told Blake that he arrived in New York with a shipment from Riven Hill (an anthracite mine in Pennsylvannia) and that he needs a piece of that coal to get home. Blake concludes his story by saying that Van Kieft is obviously a drunk, a homesick miner . . . or a lost gnome!
The rest of the story develops two subplots: the first is a problem at the local hospital, which has been sent the wrong kind of coal and is having a problem with its heating, and the second is Lynn’s discovery, after another call with Van Kieft, and then having him turn up at the office, that he really is a gnome.
These two threads resolve in the remainder of the story (spoiler), which sees Blake identify the problem at the hospital (too fine a grade of coal is falling through the grates of the boilers before it can burn) and organise a replacement shipment of coal for them. The company can’t deliver, however, partly because of a carbon monoxide incident that puts several drivers out of action, and partly because the streets are snow- and ice-bound. Step forward Van Klieft, who says he is an elemental being and—if given a piece of his native Riven Hill coal—will be able to “do anything in the earth”. When Van Klieft finally gets the coal he needs, he takes Blake and the shipment directly to the hospital:
Five minutes later a truck was on the scales, loading for the hospital.
Ginger, seeing Lynn’s uneasiness, relieved her at the switchboard. Lynn seated herself with a good view of the window, pretending to sort orders. She saw Jack come out and climb into the cab. He saw her and blew her a kiss.
A few seconds later a tiny brown-and-green figure scuttled past and sprang up beside Jack. Lynn saw with relief that Van Kieft was too little to be seen, once in the truck.
At that, it turned out to be impossible to fool the yard laborers completely. The truck rolled off the scales and turned down the street. Presently an excited and gesticulating group of workmen was gathered out in front of the office. Grant strode out and restored order. But all that afternoon the gossip filtered into the office. One of the men swore that “t’at crazy salesman, he jus’ drive across Lenox Avenoo and disappear into t’at hill. So help me. Miss Dawson, I saw wit’ my own eyes!” p. 123
The hospital get their coal, Blake gets a promotion from sales to engineering and, presumably, Lynn gets her man.
Although this sounds like a fairly lightweight Unknown-type fantasy, I’d make two observations: first, it’s an amusing and polished piece, especially for a debut story and, second, it has a very realistic setting (Jameson must have worked in this kind of office at some point in her life). This latter not only grounds the frothier fantasy part of the story, but it’s also pretty interesting account of a lost time and almost lost trade.
*** (Good). 5,400 words. Story link. Saturday Evening Post Archive Subscriptions.
1. I ended up reading this story as the result of a daisy chain of links and comments, which started with a review of the Summer 1950 issue of F&SF by Rich Horton. This led to a discussion of some of the contributors, one of whom was Cleve Cartmill: when I looked up his Wikipedia entry, I discovered that he was at one point married to Vida Jameson, the daughter of SF writer Malcolm Jameson. I recognised her name as Vida was mentioned by Alfred Bester in Hell’s Cartographers, where Bester stated that, at informal writer’s lunches he attended in the late 1930s, “Now and then [Malcolm Jameson] brought along his pretty daughter who turned everybody’s head.” (Malcolm Jameson’s ISFDB page is here, and I recommend reading his fantasy story—later turned into a Twilight Zone episode—Blind Alley).
My comment about Cleve Cartmill and Vida Jameson led to the posting of another link, which not only had a photo of her, but also provided the information that, while she was temporarily living with Robert and Virginia Heinlein, she published a story in the Saturday Evening Post (the same issue that published Heinlein’s The Green Hills of Earth)—which led me to finding that copy on the Internet Archive.
I also note in passing that Malcolm Jameson’s wife, Mary McGregor, also published a fantasy story, Transients (Unknown Worlds, February 1943), which is also worth a look.
Finally, there is a Jameson genealogy blog here, maintained by Wendy McClure, Malcolm Jameson and Mary McGregor’s great-granddaughter.
At Darlington’s by Richard Bowes (F&SF, October-November 1995)1 is the seventh published story in the “Kevin Grierson” series, and begins with his “Shadow”, a doppelgänger, or perhaps more accurately a secret double who normally exists inside Kevin, getting dressed and going to work instead of him. Most of the rest of the story involves the scrapes and encounters that the drug-using Shadow has with the other people at his place of employment (his boss warns the Shadow not to come in late again; he goes to an outdoor fashion shoot with Les; he meets a woman called Sarah who has a boozer/druggie husband, etc.)
Dropped into all of this mostly scene setting description and verbal back and forth, is a short flashback scene where we see Kevin working as a male prostitute (I think) and waking up to find his drill sergeant client is dead.
At the end of the story the Shadow returns from a drug deal to find Kevin has been drafted.
It was hard to keep track of what was going on in this slice-of-life, and I have little memory of what I did read. I’ve no idea what the editor saw in this (at best) borderline fantasy story, and wonder if it got taken on the strength of its prequels.
– (Awful). 6,750 words.
1. The ISFDB page for the Richard Bowes’ “Kevin Grierson” series.
Nackles by Donald E. Westlake (F&SF, January 1964) begins with the narrator discussing the characteristics of gods, and whether Santa Claus is one, before he goes on to talk about his sister and brother-in-law. We learn that the latter assaulted his wife on one occasion, but was convinced by the narrator (with the help of a baseball bat) not to treat her like that again. Later on, however, the brother-in-law reverts to verbally and emotionally mistreating his wife and kids, eventually inventing the idea of a satanic anti-Santa, Nackles, to keep his three children out of sight and earshot—he tells the kids that Nackles doesn’t leave presents, but comes up from his underground tunnels to capture and eat children who have been bad. Frank also tells other fathers about his invention, so the idea spreads and belief in Nackles increases.
In the final section (spoiler) Frank’s behaviour becomes worse than usual one Christmas Eve—with the expected results for someone who behaves like a spoiled child.
There isn’t much of a story here, but it is a neat, well-developed idea, with a good last line from a well-known Xmas Song (“You’d better watch out”).1
*** (Good). 3,050 words. Internet Archive.
1. Santa Claus is Coming to Town (not the original, but a version I like) at 00:49.
A Christmas Tale by Sarban (Ringstones and Other Curious Tales, 1951) opens with the narrator’s description of a group of ex-pats in Jeddah donning fancy dress before they go out carol singing on Christmas Eve. After several recitations they eventually end up in the house of Alexander Andreievitch, a displaced (Imperial) Russian who now runs the Saudi Air Force.
There, after the group have sung their carols, the narrator and the Russian start drinking their way through a bottle of Zubrovka. When the narrator notices that there is a drawing of a bison on the label of the bottle, he asks the Russian if he has ever seen one, perhaps in the wilder parts of his home country. Andreievitch says no, but adds that he once saw something even rarer.
So begins a story which takes us from the sticky heat of a Saudi evening to the cold beyond the Arctic Circle, where Andreievitch was once the observer of a two-man crew tasked to fly a seaplane from a navy ship to a distant settlement. After the pair got there and dropped their message, they turned for home—only to be caught out by worsening weather. Just before they ran out of fuel, the pilot force-landed in the marshes. The pair then struggled on their own for a number of days, before they came upon a small group of Samoyed hunters.
The natives feed the two starving men, but the meat makes them both sick—and the next day they discover that it half rotten and is covered with unfamiliar red wool or hair. The pair angrily quiz the natives about the source of the meat and, when they cannot understand the Samoyed’s replies, demand that are taken to the nearest settlement. Later, however, when the weather closes in, they find themselves taking shelter at what would appear to be the partially uncovered (but still frozen) burial grounds of an unknown creature—the source of the meat which provided their meal.
The story concludes (spoiler) with the group sheltering from the deteriorating weather under an overhanging bank, when they hear a noise in the distance:
Igor Palyashkin and I, we too shrank down against the earth; what we could hear then stilled us like an intenser frost, and I felt cold to the middle of my heart. Through the dead and awful silence of that pause before the snow we heard something coming across the blind waste towards us. All day in that dead world nothing had moved but ourselves; now, out there where the shadows advanced and retreated and the pallid gloom baffled our sight, something was coming with oh! such labour and such pain, foundering and fighting onwards through the half-solid marsh. In that absolute stillness of the frozen air we heard it when it was far away; it came so slowly and it took so long, and we dare not do anything but listen and strain our eyes into the darkening mist. In what shape of living beast could such purpose and such terrible strength be embodied? A creature mightier than any God has made to be seen by man was dragging itself through the morass. We heard the crunch of the surface ice, then the whining strain of frozen mud as the enormous bulk we could not picture bore slowly down on it; then a deep gasping sound as the marsh yielded beneath a weight its frostbonds could not bear. Then plungings of such violence and such a sound of agonised straining and moaning as constricted my heart; and, after that awful struggle, a long sucking and loud explosion of release as the beast prevailed and the marsh gave up its hold. Battle after battle, each more desperate than the last, that dreadful fight went on; we listened with such intentness that we suffered the agony of every yard of the creature’s struggle towards our little bank of earth. But as it drew nearer the pauses between its down-sinkings and its tremendous efforts to burst free grew longer, as if that inconceivable strength and tenacity of purpose were failing. In those pauses we heard the most dreadful sound of all: the beast crying with pain and the terror of death. Dear Lord God! I think no Christian men but we, Igor Palyashkin and I, have ever heard a voice like that. I know that no voice on all this earth could have answered that brute soul moaning in the mist of the lonely taiga that evening before the snow.
That beast was alone in all the world. p. 15-16
The creature never gets close to them, seemingly disappearing into the marsh or the gloom.
The final section sees the narrator’s carol-singing acquaintances get up to leave, whereupon the Russian tells him of the brief glimpse he caught of the creature: the great head, the long red-brown wool, the long curling teeth.
I liked this story—it’s an atmospheric piece with a lot of evocative descriptions (a result of its old-school literary writing). Even if the climax of the story does involve a creature that remains largely (and correctly) offstage, it is nevertheless an effective piece.
Worth reading.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 6550 words. Amazon UK Look Inside. Amazon US Look Inside.
The Mermaid Astronaut by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #298, 27th February 2020)1 has a title that pretty much describes the story: a mermaid called Essarala wants to travel among the stars but lives in a planet-bound culture. Then, when an interstellar trading ship arrives in orbit for the first time, Essarala thinks she may have found a way off-planet—until she realises that the ship has no water for a mer to live in. Her sister Kiovasa suggests they should visit the witch beneath the waves for help.
After arriving at the witch’s lair, and discussing the matter with her—during which the witch gives warnings about the dangers and difficulties that will lie ahead—she says that she can give Essarala two legs like the humans. Essarala is determined to go and, even though she doesn’t understand everything the witch has warned her about, asks what the price is. The witch replies that one day Essarala will want to come home and, when she does, she should visit her again. Then the witch gives her a knife that will cleave her tail into two legs.
Later, after Essarala has cut herself and been accepted onto the crew, she is given to an alien called Ssen to be mentored. We see her develop as a crew member, and learn about some of her adventures:
Essarala learned to fly in skysuits in vast and turbulent gas planets, some of which had corrosive atmospheres. She saw twin sunsets over methane seas and meteor showers flung across brilliantine nighttime skies. She walked through forests of towering trees sharded through with crystal and breathed in the fragrance of flowers that bloomed only once a millennium. And she kept her promise, too: for every world she visited, she sang her sister’s name.
Someday I will go back and tell her of the things I have seen, Essarala thought again and again. But not yet, not yet.
Then, towards the end of the story (spoiler), Ssen teaches Essarala about special relativity, and she realises that time will be passing much more quickly for her sister on her world. Essarala begs the captain and crew to take her back home, and they generously do so. As soon as they arrive Essarala visits the witch as promised, to be told that the old woman will shortly die and that, given the wisdom she has gained on her travels, Essarala will replace her . Then the witch tells Essarala that her sister is still alive but that she doesn’t have long left. Essarala goes to find her, and the story ends with the two sisters together.2
I thought the idea of telling an SF story as a fantasy tale worked very well here (it’s possible to view the severing of her tail to become two legs, etc., as unexplained superscience), and it is an enjoyable and original piece. I also thought Lee’s elegant and concise writing style added to the story. The ending is perhaps not as strong as the rest of it, but that is a minor quibble.3
***+ (Good to very good.) 5,950 words. [Story]
1. This is a finalist for the Sturgeon and short story Hugo Awards for 2021.
2. There is a dedication at the end of the story to Lee’s sister.
3. Some of the commenters in one of my (private) FB groups (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction) thought that the lack of foreboding at the end of the story was a weakness. I thought that the uncertainty about her sister provided that.
Down and Out Under the Tannhauser Gate by David Gullen (Parsec #1, Autumn 2021) has as its narrator a woman called Mercedes, who lives beside a stargate on a future Earth:
This part of the world is a landscape of steps, a white stone hill two miles wide and one mile high. Eight thousand steps with a hundred flights and platforms. At the bottom lies a human city, a ramshackle shanty thing.
At the top are the sky-high silver pillars of the Tannhauser Gate, the beautiful gate, the one we Earther soldiers tried so hard, so very damned hard, to reach.
How I hate that gate. Yet here I am, living in its shadow. Most visitors climb the centre regions of the steps. The aliens come down and the replica men go up, because now they are free they can do what they want. Them, but not us.
Cytheran guards keep everything peaceful, which is nice of them considering they made us rebuild the place when the war was over. p. 4
The story opens with Mercedes meeting a woman called Riay coming back through the gate (we later find out she is physically altered, two elbows on each arm, three fingers on her hand, etc.). She tells Mercedes she has come back to help, and Mercedes refers to her as a “priestess” at one point. We also get some back story about the war against the aliens, and some detail about the Cytheran guards that now patrol the Tannhauser gate (such as the fact they float just above the ground as they move around). We also learn that few humans are allowed to use the gates, although this does not stop many travellers coming to petition the aliens.
We later learn more about Mercedes and Jonni’s relationship (including that she is emotionally dependent on him) before three aliens arrive to see the site of the battle at the gate. Mercedes is on the point of telling them that she was a combatant when a man called Blascard arrives demanding a minnesang from the aliens—a key that will let him use the gate and travel to the thousand worlds on the other side. When he continues to make a nuisance of himself, and subsequently gets too close to the aliens, a Cytheran guard teleports him away. When Blascard later returns to the gate, he demands a key from Riay instead (one of the few humans who has been allowed to use the gate), but she offers him only the chance to learn from her.
The penultimate part of the story (spoiler) sees Jonni offer water to a group of petitioners making their way up the steps to the gate. Mercedes speaks to the group and identifies herself as Sergeant Mercedes Gantl, the last survivor of the Fighting Ninth, the military unit that attacked the gate. Then she realises that the group are Neos, ex-military who intend doing the same. Mercedes and Jonni watch their attack: Jonni gets caught in the crossfire and is badly wounded. After all the Neos are killed, a Cytheran comes over to Mercedes, who is holding a dying Jonni in her arms:
I heard a furious static burst and a hundred voices spoke in my mind.
—this was never our intent
Never.
Unforseen
—we know the difference
Unwished
Unwanted
All our <untranslatable> weep with you
He was never—
—he would ever have been—
Welcomed
A final Cytheran slid aside like a leaf on the wind and I was at the gate. The pillars went up forever, the space between a silver-grey curtain like soft rain. Beyond it lay everything we had been denied and now they were letting us through. Jonni was his own minnesang, and today, somehow, he was mine too. If I wanted, I could go through.
—no, he is only himself—
You are your own song—
Changed now.
—each becomes their own minnesang.
If you want— p. 9
The Cytheran then takes the dying Jonni out of her arms to take him through the gate, and tells her to come back when she is ready.
The last section of the story shows a changed Mercedes, no longer resentful but someone who now helps others. A year later she goes back to the gate and passes through. She spends a thousand years travelling on the other side of the gate before returning to find she has been gone for three days. She discovers that Blascard is really a teacher, helping those left behind to get through the gate. Mercedes and Blascard and Riay team up to work to that end.
There isn’t really much of a story here—it is more a series of events—but it has an intriguing setting, convincing description and characterisation, and a transcendent ending. Stock stuff maybe, but well put together. I thought this was a pretty good.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 6,500 words. Parsec website.
The Lichyard by Harrison Valley (Parsec #1, Autumn 2021) begins with a man called Emil carrying the corpse of a man called Taff to the Lichyard. They squabble along the way:
“Why’re you complaining? You paid me to get you to the Lichyard as fast as possible!”
“I didn’t realize I’d be staring into the sun the whole time.”
“What do you want from me? It’s evening, and the Lichyard’s in the east.” There are two voices but one set of footsteps. “Besides, the sun can’t hurt you. You don’t even have eyes.”
“Yet it is blinding.”
“And?”
A man walks from an alleyway, talking over his shoulder.
Lashed to his back, a grey and dusty burden bounces limply with each step. A human skull lolls over toward the man’s ear, and from between decayed teeth come the words, “I’m dead. Don’t I deserve compassion?” p. 29
En route Emil loses the three coins he needs to put on Taff’s eyes and mouth when he buries him, and so he comes up with a plan to steal those from another corpse when they get to the graveyard. However, when they arrive, matters play out differently (spoiler): Emil buries Taff without the coins but, when the undertaker arrives, he changes his mind. However, when Emil digs down to retrieve the body he finds it has disappeared. Then the undertaker is shot by an old person in a tree, and Emil is told to take the corpse back to where he lost the coins.
There are a couple of good images and scenes here (the quarrel at the beginning, the Lichyard, etc.) but these haven’t been turned into a coherent whole.
* (Mediocre). 2,500 words. Parsec website.
Tesla on the Grass, Alas by Esther M. Friesner (Parsec #1, Autumn 2021) appears to be about a man who talks to a woman called Gertrude before (spoiler) turning some sort of ray gun on himself—but I’m not entirely sure (it is written in prose that, from the opening paragraphs, verges on the impenetrable):
What there was in her that was beautiful was what I saw. No ray that I could make could be her elegant equal yet I knew the one I made would be the equalizing force that was forced between us, between her and me. She was my taunting point of equilibrium, reached and unreachable. Her mass obeyed the Newtonian law that thus far in my life I had risen above in all things except the shackling demands of gravity. It drew me to her, helpless once I wandered within her field and found that I was drawn despite me to that quality in women which I previously found myself unable to stomach, their stomachs, the rolling terrain of mountainous flesh that offered me the threat of avalanche–inspired entombment with each embrace. p. 40
– (Awful). 1,050 words. Parsec website.